One problem you will have to address is between the different roles (fps/rpg/rts) is how depedant they are and what happens when you cannot fill a role
at any point in time? If there is no strategic level player(s) is there anything to guide the lower roles and if no lower then the orders get carried out by dumb bots(or not at all)? If any role is placed by incompetant/uncooperative players (locally) do the other roles interacting in that locality have their game experience suffer?

Writing logic to competantly fill the roles when players arent available can be quite difficult.

Restrictions to prevent player abuse (force players to act as expected) can be monolithic or incomplete.

Doing such a game for 2 roles is usually difficult enough but with additional tiers that complicates making it work quite a bit more.

--------------------------------------------Ratings are Opinion, not Fact

One problem you will have to address is between the different roles (fps/rpg/rts) is how depedant they are and what happens when you cannot fill a roleat any point in time? If there is no strategic level player(s) is there anything to guide the lower roles and if no lower then the orders get carried out by dumb bots(or not at all)? If any role is placed by incompetant/uncooperative players (locally) do the other roles interacting in that locality have their game experience suffer?

Writing logic to competantly fill the roles when players arent available can be quite difficult.

Restrictions to prevent player abuse (force players to act as expected) can be monolithic or incomplete.

Doing such a game for 2 roles is usually difficult enough but with additional tiers that complicates making it work quite a bit more.

I'm a firm believer that all games should take advantage of Artificial Intelligence to fill in human-player gaps and perform repetitive tasks. However, Balance is always an issue in Multiplayer games with complex interactions and their solutions would game dependent. The impact to the world between the `roles` could be both explicit and implicit. I would speculate that its completely possible to develop such a game very few balancing issues especially if rules in place are very concise.

Hi TechLord. Even if I like your idea a lot, after thinking about it for a while, I don't see it working. First of all, what would be the Commander's role? And why would anyone listen to him? Besides, both the Commander and players must co-exist online at the same time to communicate and carry on tasks. I just don't see it happen...

You could think about it as to a Guild from WoW, except that Commanders have a top-view interface over the battlefield and tell players what to do, where to go... While this is nice in theory is kind of hard to implement in reality. That's just my point of view; it was not my intention to rain on your parade. I will be following this topic. ;)

both the Commander and players must co-exist online at the same time to communicate

Why !?! What is sense in this : if one of them On-Line then he Drive Group (s) , if Both Commander On-Line then Drive of Groups isGreatly !!

If not a have Humanity Player in game location ( GL ) then you will lancing NPC RTS player into your Groups , but then gamemust consist AI tactical NPC : this is CompaRate ( CR ) with Automatically Battle fight .

Movement : light version especially endurance ChekPointS - first Vector1 of move Plus second Vector2 plus Next VectorN andall of this Save in Massive and will have Matrix of MovementS - see as stanDarth method ))

I'm seeing a couple of powerful trends in gaming which have the potential to dominate the industry. I think this is one of them. -Unified game world with multiple game "views" (Dust 514) -Free to play everything with tiered service model (Battlefield Heros, Free Realms, etc..) -Procedural worlds with strong physical modeling (Drawf Fortress, Minecraft, etc..) -Open instanced multiplayer worlds, join anytime (Minecraft, Guild Wars, etc..) -Cloud based gaming (Onlive, Gaikai, etc..) -Casual gaming (web, mobile, social games etc..) Of course they all have existing precedent but as time goes on, I think these models will start to dominate the gaming scene. -ddn

Amazing!

ddn3, I've also recognized these trends which have subconciously inspired me to develop a Collaborative Cloud-based Game Development Platform that consolidates a Interactive Lobby, Content Creation Tools, Game Systems/Mechanics, Microtransactions, Marketing and Online Distribution into one a single product. The question I'm asked the most often is Do you think you can pull it off?

I'm seeing a couple of powerful trends in gaming which have the potential to dominate the industry. I think this is one of them. -Unified game world with multiple game "views" (Dust 514) -Free to play everything with tiered service model (Battlefield Heros, Free Realms, etc..) -Procedural worlds with strong physical modeling (Drawf Fortress, Minecraft, etc..) -Open instanced multiplayer worlds, join anytime (Minecraft, Guild Wars, etc..) -Cloud based gaming (Onlive, Gaikai, etc..) -Casual gaming (web, mobile, social games etc..) Of course they all have existing precedent but as time goes on, I think these models will start to dominate the gaming scene. -ddn

Amazing!

ddn3, I've also recognized these trends which have subconciously inspired me to develop a Collaborative Cloud-based Game Development Platform that consolidates a Interactive Lobby, Content Creation Tools, Game Systems/Mechanics, Microtransactions, Marketing and Online Distribution into one a single product. The question I'm asked the most often is Do you think you can pull it off?

I think you can! I agree with your assessment and will also add that such a system would not just benefit "games" but any pro-creative act be it software engineering, pure mathematics, art, music etc.. Imagine a cloud based virtual environment where one programmer writes up a algorithm using visual forms much like legos, while his peers (separated by 100s of miles in the real world) review the construct, copying and improving, all source controlled and versioned. After they run and debug it they can post the entire process as an annotated YouTube video tutorial for others to learn from..

My apologies Morphia, but, I don't understand what you're trying to get at.

One World, Multiple Interfaces is a design philosophy. I'm a big fan of Text-based gaming, especially web-based collaborative games. I enjoy text-based games so much that I'm integrating multiple text-only game engines (MUD, Interactive Fiction, Grid-Game and Action-Text) into my Super 3D Game Platform's Shell. A Command Line Interface(which also integrates IRC and Scripting Console). With S3GP Shell, Text Games co-exist on the 3D Client.

One aspect you might give consideration to is the strong utilsation of clan/guild builds. Teamwork is often a core component of such situations which could lend itself to the discipline you would want for the larger scale activities.

I am looking at a design for a MMORPG based on a solo game (Bioshock) with at least 2~3 interface modes where there is :
1) a FPS interface (your gaming machine) for combats and exploring, and
2) a bunch of NPCs to order around to do the grindy stuff (help in combat too) - the RTS elements of rebuilding the ruined City the game is set in, and
3) the Tablet/Palmtop interface for minigames that have results in the main game, interplayer communications (mail, auction house, etc..) and some NPC task management.

Hi TechLord. Even if I like your idea a lot, after thinking about it for a while, I don't see it working. First of all, what would be the Commander's role? And why would anyone listen to him? Besides, both the Commander and players must co-exist online at the same time to communicate and carry on tasks. I just don't see it happen... You could think about it as to a Guild from WoW, except that Commanders have a top-view interface over the battlefield and tell players what to do, where to go... While this is nice in theory is kind of hard to implement in reality. That's just my point of view; it was not my intention to rain on your parade. I will be following this topic. ;)

I recall some two tiered game along time ago with 2 leaders of opposite sides and a bunch of player fighting.The commanders coerced their minions into following orders by setting goals (markers/whatever) that awarded advancement when they were carries out.

I dont remember whatever came of that game. I wouldnt doubt they would need a way to almost instantly replace a commander who dropped out.

Likewise any large number of players trying to work together (in a coordinated way) needs a replacement system to feed in replacesments for anyone who drops out (which with 50 players would likely be one every 30 second the way people play these days).

Waiting for enough players even to gather is usually a problem and really needs to be some continuous thing with ad-hoc groups.

--------------------------------------------Ratings are Opinion, not Fact

One possibility is that a particular game mode is almost like a specialisation. For example, if an RTS guy "harvests" an area it would yield say 50% of the material to be found there, but an RPG guy could manually check everywhere and get 100% of the stuff. Or an FPS guy could drive a vehicle, but it's FPS style and he doesn't have the options to change gears, upgrade the car, etc, so he's much slower than a dedicated racer. The racer could be a courier transporting stuff from town to town. An FPS guy could have a door hacking tool which is slow and/or sometimes fails, or a puzzle guy could be a dedicated hacker that other people can call on as required. He could also hack stuff that other players can't such as surveillance systems.

Let us say we do create such a world, wouldn't that at least need a better understanding of AIs and how they can interact with other players? I suppose we need a world that is working without anything holding it up, so if we give the player the option to opt in some kind of activity we can never assure that both sides will be equal without a waiting list (which could be killing if there is nothing else for the player to do/gain). AI should take on a more proactive role, instead of those which we say in many strategy games where it would just react when the odds are ever in his favor. Plus we must not forget the interaction of the player with the AI as non-enemy.

The problem with this kind of game is the capacity to entertain. Its quite easy to give everyone a job, however we don't want to annoy them by giving them tedious work that requires no effort whatsoever, no matter how big the pay offs are (for that the player uses cheats).

Hy Techlord,
i have been thinking about such a multi-genre game as u describe it for a long time. I placed my idea in the sci-fi genre and thought of joinig RTS/FPS/Simulation. In short it would happen like raiding in wow. a group of people specialized in different areas would meet to achieve a common goal. in my case it would go a little bit like this. a battleship, carrying all players would enter a hostile solar-system to raid a planet. the Space-Admiral (RTS) would launch the fighters and protect the dropships heading for the planet. Arriving on the planet again a RTS player would start his normal routine with building his base/units to achieve his goal of e.g. protecting a digging site. The FPS player would actually choose what to do. either help the RTS as a hero unit, by his free will and only accepting orders if he wants to or go on his own mission. This missions would be e.g. infiltrate a underground compound and destroy generators which will slow down the response of the planets garrison by a big deal.
I also have come to believe that the two following points , imho, would be very important to be kept at anytime
- Players should be rewarded for playing together and helping each other. If the dont cooperate then the mission should still be fun for them individually.
- Even if all players but one drop the common game, it would still have to be possible for him to "go home" safely.